J. W.
Haas' article, "Relativity and Christian Thought: The Early Response,"
[Perspectives 40(l):10-18, March 1988] should suggest some key themes to
be found in Thomas F. Torrance's "Integration of Judeo-Christian Theology
and Einstein's Relativity Theory."

1. Relativity theory emphasizes the unitary
character of scientific knowledge at all stages of development: Empirical and
theoretical factors are inseparably integrated together representing a unitary
epistemological structure that should be characteristic of good physics and good
theology! (Torrance refers to this unity in physics of theoretical and empirical
as the homoousion of physics.)

2. Relativity theory primarily stresses the
invariant nature of physical law which, secondarily, results in the relativism
of observational details with respect to different laboratory systems. Torrance
suggests that the invariant character of physical laws arises from the
faithfulness, constancy and utter dependability of God's love manifest through
his sustaining care of the Creation.

3. Relativity theory understands the space-time continuum
(space-time) from a relational, as contrasted to a container, perspective.
Torrance argues that Einstein's relational understanding of space-time
shares congruences with that of some Patristic Church Fathers (Hilary,
Athanasius) who were responsible for the Christological truth contained in the
early creeds. Such relational, as contrasted to container, understanding of
space-time makes far more tractable the problem of how the Creator of the
space-time Universe entered into his own Creation (the Incarnation Event in
space-time; .e., Jesus Christ).

4. General relativity is a fieldtheory.
Torrance argues that field heories, constituting a relational understanding of
physical reality, have a number of structural elements that are analogous to
concepts in Judeo-Christian theology. Personhood understood in a relational context and an elementary particle as a relational (field) entity
is one possible analogy.

5. Physical theory at its best develops
"invisible" conceptual "objects"; i.e., the space-time
metric of general relativity, that explains the behavior associated with
observable, "visible" phenomena. In creative scientific theories the
"invisible" explains the "visible" rather than the
"visible" explaining the "invisible." The same is true in
creative theology.

6. Strictly speaking, Torrance develops his multi-level view
of reality primarily from the thought of M. Polanyi and I. Prigogine's
irreversible thermodynamics, not from relativity theory by itself.

7. A general comment. The Enduring Themes section
of Haas' article might have as a subheading Einstein's remark:
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
(a) Einstein's notion of religion was impersonal with an element of
transcendence, but the remark is applicable to Judeo-Christianity/science
interrelations. (b) Schematically Einstein's remark could be represented in
terms of Religion-Science integration: